Ah, the warning that I was getting about PERL_SRC turned out to be operator error: 
[me@unixbox1:/home/me/build/perl-addons/tmp/HTML-Template-2.8]> perl M
+akefile.PL PERL_SRC=/home/me/build/perl/inst/usr/local
Checking if your kit is complete...
Looks good

You cannot build extensions below the perl source tree after executing
a 'make clean' in the perl source tree.

To rebuild extensions distributed with the perl source you should
simply Configure (to include those extensions) and then build perl as
normal. After installing perl the source tree can be deleted. It is
not needed for building extensions by running 'perl Makefile.PL'
usually without extra arguments.

It is recommended that you unpack and build additional extensions away
from the perl source tree.
Warning: PERL_LIB (/home/me/build/perl/inst/usr/local/lib) seems not t
+o be a perl library directory
        (Exporter.pm not found) at /home/me/build/perl/inst/usr/local/
+lib/perl5/5.8.8/ExtUtils/MM_Unix.pm line 1668.
Writing Makefile for HTML::Template

[download]
Setting PERL_SRC to /home/me/build/perl/perl-5.8.8 (which is the equivalent path that ExtUtils::MakeMaker was defaulting to when installing CPAN modules from /home/me/build/perl/perl-5.8.8/<Module>) doesn't display that message.

Now, I'm conflicted. The perldoc for ExtUtils::MakeMaker says that you should only use PERL_SRC if Perl hasn't been installed. I HAVE installed Perl, albeit to a local directory, via make install DESTDIR=/home/me/build/perl/inst. My interpretation of the documentation implies that what I'm doing isn't correct even though it (now) seems to work.

In reply to Re^2: installing CPAN modules locally with a local perl installation by Anonymous Monk
in thread installing CPAN modules locally with a local perl installation by Anonymous Monk

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